Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Languages

For the third year, I have gone to the Czech Republic to teach English at a summer camp in the mountains.  Each year I have gone confidant in my ability to impart wisdom and make English fun.  Each year I learn that I am not as good as I think I am, but vow that next year I will have it down.

This year, there was a twist.  A church in Austria heard about the camp and sent 7 Mongolians. 
None of whom speak Czech.  They all spoke Mongolian, of course, and whatever German dialect is in Austria.

The two youngest boys, spoke, respectively, very little English and no English at all.  And they were so delightful I asked for them to be my students.


We had a great time!  I drilled them on the basics:  Hello, how are you, I am fine think you, my name is, my birthday is, etc.  And then I had them draw their neighborhood, and we got a lot of vocabulary.  We also drew our houses.  And our family trees.  With the help of a picture dictionary, we talked about the fruits and vegetables, we liked, things at the seaside, favorite animals.  I could not have done it without my assistant Rebecca, who is also from Mongolia and is fluent in Mongolian, Czech, and English.

The last day I sent them on a treasure hunt, and as they left the classroom, I pulled out my bag of jolly rancher candy, set it on the table, and then tried to keep up with them.  The last clue was "classroom" and they went running back to it, ignored the candy on the table, and asked for the next clue.  So I wrote "candy" on another post it note and put in on the bag.

They chose blue raspberry ones  (I, of course, picked green apple), and so then we learned a Very Useful Phrase:  "My tongue is blue."  (I never did teach them "Where is the bathroom...so their education is woefully limited.)

It turns out that you can't get Jolly Rancher candies in Austria, so the whole bag went home with them to share with their families.

As I said, they spoke German.  So I dusted off my bad German and was able to communicate with them a little.  (Of course, once I spoke to them in German, they assumed I was fluent and started telling me all sorts of stuff that went right over me head.)  Fortunately, there were others at the camp who were fluent in German.

(The Groucho Marx glasses went home with them too.)

They met their parents at the train station in Prague, who gave me some mint candies and a Mongolian Princess Key chain.

About 10 years ago, I was touring Prague with Aja, my former exchange student, and a group of French tourists got on the subway after us.  At some point Aja said we needed the next stop, and so when the doors opened, I said "Excusez-moi, s'il vous plait", and they parted for us.  This was the only time I have ever successfully communicated in French with anyone.  Last month was the only time I successfully communicated in German.

Which only goes to show you that the Czech Republic is the center of the world.

posted by Marion @ 9:32 PM